


The Death of Lewis

by KHGiggle



Series: Mystery Skulls Animated + 1 [2]
Category: Grrl Power (Webcomic), Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: F/M, Lose of body parts, lots of blood, these kids need to talk things out, you can see the cracks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 06:49:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18867937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KHGiggle/pseuds/KHGiggle
Summary: How Lewis lost his life, Arthur lost his arm, and Sydney lost her eye.It was a bad night.





	The Death of Lewis

“So, what’s the story behind this cave?” asked Lewis.

Vivi grinned. “Pretty typical. Someone was murdered there. Murderer was lynched. Now the victim supposedly haunts the cave, sometimes possessing explorers and making them commit suicide. There have been enough deaths that they’ve set up warning signs saying it’s haunted and you’re risking your life by going there.”

“Then why are we going there?” muttered Sydney.

Lewis bit his lip. Sydney had been uncharacteristically silent during their drive, simply sitting on the other side of the driver’s seat and doing…something? Nothing? Lewis glanced towards Arthur who was leaning over the back of the seat and as such had a good view of everyone in the van.

Arthur shrugged and looked away.

“It’s a haunted road trip,” Vivi replied to Sydney’s question. “We go to places that are supposed to be haunted, whether it’s something I researched beforehand or we just happened stumbled across it.”

“…I don’t like it. Can’t we just go home?” asked Sydney.

“If you don’t want to explore the cave, you can stay in the van,” said Vivi.

“No, I can’t,” said Sydney.

“We do kind of need Sydney if we want to stay safe,” pointed out Arthur.

“We all have charms to protect against possession, so I think we’ll be okay if she sits out this case,” said Vivi.

Sydney huffed. “You’re not going without me.”

Lewis was relieved to see the cave coming up. “We’re here.” He turned off the van and turned to face Vivi and Arthur. “Everyone ready?”

“Yep!” Vivi gave Lewis a peck on the lips. He gave her a goofy grin.

Arthur looked away from the scene with a frown. “Yeah,” he said morosely.

Sydney just moved to the back of the van and opened the back doors.

After taking a moment to light a couple of torches (They weren’t affected by ghosts so they would use them when they could get away with it.) they walked into the cave.

Mystery immediately realized they were working with something much worse than a resentful murder victim. The amount of malice in the air, the fog saturated with dark energy…If it wasn’t a demon, it was at least something that could be compared to one.

And Sydney had used up most of her power over the last week. She might not even have enough to protect herself from this, much less the other members of the group. Mystery would have to look out for them this time.

They came upon a split in the cave. A sign (with actual skulls for some reason) seemed to indicate where the two paths led, but the letters on it had faded too much to read.

“Okay, time to split up,” said Vivi.

Mystery’s eyes widened. Oh no…

“Should we do the usual?” asked Lewis. He wanted to ask Vivi what she and Sydney had argued about last night. It had been loud enough for him and Arthur to hear it in the motel room next door, but not quite loud enough for them to hear the actual words.

Vivi grin nervously. "Actually, I was hoping to talk to Sydney-”

“Oh come on!” interrupted Sydney.

“No, really, I think we need to talk.”

“I’m still upset from last night!” Sydney then turned on her heel and marched off down the right tunnel. “Vivi, you better not follow!”

“Sydney, wait!” shouted Vivi as she ignored the command and ran after Sydney.

Lewis’ eyes widened. “Hey, Vivi, don’t-” Too late. “Oh no…”

“They’re going to yell at each other again, aren’t they?” asked Arthur.

Lewis sighed. “Probably. The only other time I saw Sydney this upset…” He winced. “Long story short, her father got rid of the ‘No Christmas’ rule.”

Arthur made a face. He’d seen the Scoville Festivus celebration once, and once had been enough. “Should we go after them?”

Lewis thought for a moment. He wanted to make sure they were okay, but he also wanted to give them some privacy. Plus, the sooner they finished exploring, the sooner they could get home and work on putting this behind them.

Although, that would mean being alone with Arthur.

“Let’s just explore the left path,” decided Lewis.

“Okay.”

The two were faintly aware that Mystery had decided to follow them, but assumed it was because he didn’t want to have to deal with the shouting that would come from the girls.

Actually, it was because the malicious energy seemed to be focusing more on the two boys, which was a bit odd in Mystery’s opinion. He’d have expected it to go after the girls with how upset Sydney was.

 

“Whoa! Sydney wait up!”

“I said I don’t want to talk to you!”

“What’s your problem?!”

“I told you! You wouldn’t listen!”

“Because what you said didn’t make sense!”

“You just didn’t want it to make sense!”

 

There was a lot less talking with Arthur and Lewis. Neither knew what to say. Lewis felt uncomfortable around Arthur and part of why he wanted to finish this quickly was so he wouldn’t have to be alone with him.

Arthur knew that he was making Lewis uncomfortable and why but didn’t know how to make it stop short of staying away from Lewis. He didn’t want to stay away from any of them though. He loved them! Yet Lewis and Vivi were spending more time away from them. And Vivi and Sydney weren’t getting along.

Were they going to fall apart? Arthur wasn’t sure he’d survive losing them.

The tunnel ended and opened up to a cavern. The path came to a sudden stop at least a hundred feet above the ground.

 

“Sydney, look, I get that you’re upset.”

Sydney rounded on Vivi. “Then why are you doing the same thing?!”

“It’s just for a little while! As soon as I get my powers to start working-”

“That isn’t worth our lives!”

“Our lives aren’t in danger!”

 

Lewis looked up. “Stalactites. I wonder if there are stalagmites.” He walked to the edge.

Arthur massaged his hand. It was tingling uncomfortably. “Don’t get too close to the edge. It’s really slippery.”

“It’s just for a moment.” There were stalagmites. Lewis frowned. A couple of small figures were down below. “I think I see the girls.”

Arthur’s arm was really feeling bad. Was it spreading? Was this natural? He opened his mouth to ask Lewis if he could see anything.

But nothing came out.

Arthur realized something was very wrong as his mouth clicked shut against his will. Before he could think of some way to alert Lewis, the left side of his body leapt forward and pushed Lewis just as he started to turn around.

Lewis went over the edge, only seeing Arthur’s left side grinning.

Arthur grabbed his arm, but it was too late. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to throw himself off the cliff after Lewis, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t even make a sound.

Lewis was terrified out of his mind, didn’t want to die, felt angry, and he’d been right about him!

“You’re so selfish!” shouted Sydney milliseconds before Lewis landed on and was impaled by a stalagmite they were standing next to.

Both girls turned and screamed. Lewis had exactly 2.3 seconds of life left, which were used to realize Vivi and Sydney had just seen his murder and then wish that this wouldn’t ruin their life.

At the same time, Mystery had realized that he had waited far too long to combat an entity that was even more dangerous than he thought. He transformed into his true form, tackled Arthur’s body to the ground, and bit into his shoulder.

The entity half cursed and tried to reach behind to attack Mystery. It was a bad angle. Mystery quickly used a powerful exorcism spell. It only managed to push the entity back into Arthur’s arm. Mystery had been expecting that though, set up several seals on said arm to trap the entity inside of it, and tore it away from the rest of Arthur’s body.

The entity, now trapped in a prison, was cut off from the power stored in the cave and the energy just generated from Lewis’ death. Said power and energy was promptly absorbed by the only other incorporeal entity: Lewis.

The power acted on Lewis’ last thought and shot into Vivi and Sydney’s eyes. The two froze up as the dying wish went through their minds, isolating any memories containing Lewis or associated with him, locking the memories away, and putting up blocks to keep them from being able to remember or even notice the missing memories. Within a few seconds, the two slumped forwards, faces blank.

Since Lewis’ body was right in front of them, the aforementioned blocks were making them immediately ignore and file away what they were seeing continuously, making it so that they couldn’t perceive reality or react at the moment.

Up above, Arthur was free from the entity’s influence and was now screaming incoherently for Lewis. Mystery flinched guiltily. He could have stopped that. The entity tried to attack him. Mystery growled and shook it around. He would need to find some way to get rid of this thing.

And Mystery abruptly realized that Arthur had stopped moving and shouting. He’d lost a lot of blood very quickly. If Mystery remembered correctly, that could send a human into shock.

Mystery gave the injury a quick cauterization and checked Arthur’s pulse. His heart had stopped.

Mystery had already lost one pup. He wasn’t going to lose another. He quickly turned Arthur over, sliced a paw open, and used a pair of tails to lift Arthur up while he let blood drip into Arthur’s mouth. After making sure that the blood had been swallowed, Mystery lay Arthur back down and quickly pressed down on Arthur’s chest in his own version of CPR.

Arthur let out a loud gasp and started coughing. Mystery relaxed a little…which the arm took advantage of to wriggle out of Mystery’s mouth. Mystery snapped at it while quickly positioning himself over Arthur.

The arm promptly decided to change targets, jumped off the cliff, landed on Sydney’s face, and dug into her right eye. Pain and self-preservation temporarily overpowered the dying wish. She screamed, grabbed the arm, and tried to pry it off of her.

Mystery quickly grabbed Arthur with his tails and jumped to the cave floor. He grabbed the arm and yanked it away. Sydney fell on her butt, pressing her hands into her eyes.

The arm slipped out of Mystery’s grip and scurried away. Mystery took stock of the situation.

Lewis: Dead. There is nothing Mystery can do except come back and see if he becomes a ghost.

Arthur: In shock and in serious need of medical attention. Even with some of Mystery’s blood he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Sydney: Upon closer inspection, her right eye appeared to be missing (Mystery scanned the ground but didn’t see it.), and there were several scratches on her upper face. It wasn’t life threatening, but it was life changing and would require medical attention sooner rather than later. Her left eye seemed to have a purple glow to it.

Vivi: Physically unharmed but unresponsive with a purple glow to her eyes. Looked like Lewis had done something to her and Sydney that was preventing them from doing anything.

Mystery concluded that while he wanted to get rid of the thing in Arthur’s arm, he had to get the surviving children to a hospital ASAP if he didn’t want anyone else to die. He turned to look at Lewis’ limp body.

“I’m sorry. I’ll come back.”

And then he ran.


End file.
